Starship Invasion (Lost Colony Uprising Book 2)

by Darcy Troy Paulin

  Commander Carrack got up from one of the plastic chairs he'd been sitting in. He stepped forward and shook Quin's hand. “I'm Commander Carrack. And if I am not mistaken, you are Quin.”

  “Yes,” Quin said, “Quin.”

  “There are few that survived being swallowed as long as you were. It says on your medical file that you killed the squid from inside.”

  “Ah… ya.” Quin said lamely.

  “Nicely done,” Carrack said

  “Thanks,” Quin said, feeling more and more uncomfortable by the moment.

  “I'll cut to the chase here. We need people as duty crew on the ship during the journey. Exactly two people, and it would mean they had to stay awake. Now, you’re a little young for the job, but you have one of the requirements already. That chip.” The commander pointed to Quin's head. “I only have one more on hand. Though I still need a volunteer to use it.”

  “Jayleen would be good. She was always solid on the clifftops and she saved my life from that squid—”

  “No thank you.” Jayleen's voice came from around the doorway in the hall. “I don't want some gross electro-thingy in my brain if I can help it.” She peeked around the door frame and waved at the commander. “And I'm starting to come around to this sleeping through the hard part plan. Stasis doesn't sound so bad now.”

  He raised an eyebrow and gave Quin a look that said Nice-try-getting-alone-time-with-your-girlfriend. “Any other suggestions?”

  Quin knew Cailin was too young, Commander Carrack would never agree to him as a choice. He thought of Chaplin.

  “I'll do it,” Greta said, rounding the corner and entering the room. “Greta Caulasdaughter.”

  Commander Carrack looked around her to the doorway. “If there are anymore of you waiting around the corner, just come in now.”

  Jayleen, Cailin, and Chaplin rounded the corner and entered the office. The commander looked small surrounded by the Grailliyn's, young though they were. When he saw Chaplin, he lost interest in the rest of them. “You will do,” he said to Greta. “It's not like I can do a background check or anything. Dr Simmons will be here soon, and she'll set you up with the chip.” He gestured that she could go, never taking his eyes off Chaplin. The others took it to mean should go as well and filed out.

  Quin stayed where he was, as did Chaplin.

  “I know you have your own communications channels and procedures. But this is my evacuation operation, and I can't for the life of me think of why you might be ordered to evacuate with the refugees,” the commander said.

  “I have no such orders,” Chaplin said.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I have received no orders since I was rescued by these Grailliyns. There is…no network.”

  “Not down here maybe… but up on the surface? We've lost contact with Mega…” the commander said, “temporarily, of course. But you should have been able to get a signal from our local surface network. Your communications systems must have been damaged…”

  “System diagnostic suggest that communications are operable.”

  “Whatever the case, something is wrong. See Dr Simmons when she gets here. She might be able to make the repair, otherwise you'll have to travel back to camp at NaChar see if you can get a new body.”

  “I do not wish to be alone,” Chaplin said.

  “Well, if we can get you back on the network, you won't be.” The commander picked up one of the palm-sized objects on the table and the monitor on the table displayed a different image. “What's your name?”

  “Chaplin.”

  There was a look of partial recognition on the commander’s face. He did something with the device and information appeared on the screen.

  Quin could read English very well, but the letters were small and too far away to make out. It seemed to be a list.

  “Someone named Horn has been looking for you. I think everyone else thought you were a goner.”

  Dr Simmons did arrive quickly, and Greta accosted her immediately with a request to have the chip installed. Greta was relieved to have achieved her goal without effort, but as sometimes happened, Quin was less excited. He had to agree with Jayleen. Sleeping through this might have been the best choice for all of them. No more adventures, no more worries. No more decisions to be made.

  Chapter 27

  The science nerds agreed to help out. Snow thought she even caught a sense of excitement from them, about sticking it to the boss Blob in a by-the-rules kinda way. But she was forced to admit that she might not have a good read on these totally alien aliens just yet.

  The mining drones churned through the easily accessible Akoronite, filling their paired bags with the good stuff. To add to the mining frenzy, Max built a large drone in the factory. With the assistance of the friendly Torrian's fast ship, it was delivered to the Akoronite rich asteroids to speed along the mining process. Meanwhile the three drones that had been investigating the alien mining operations were directed to the thin rings of the pale blue planet below to collect reaction mass for the Dee-Dubs thrusters.

  When the drones had mined enough Akoronite to fill the Dee-Dub, a goal quickly exceeded thanks to the rich supply, they carried on mining more and more of it.

  Communication with the scientist aliens continued throughout. Snow filled in details of humankind's story, and she and Max had questions of their own.

  “What would you do if you jumped to a system that had an undiscovered civilization?” Max asked on his turn with the back and forth sharing.

  The aliens explained that great care must be taken with each jump, because in concordance with the agreements, they would be bound to stay in such a system, or travel slowly away from it until they reached a safe jumping point at another star, a journey that would of course take many years. Max wondered just how likely that was to happen. Perhaps these aliens were so dedicated to following the word of the law, but how many individual ship captains would follow through with such a law, damning their crews to a delay of, at the very least, many years.

  Next Max asked about the mining drone they'd captured. A lingering worry that it might leak a signal hovered in the back of his mind. The alien science team was interested in the drone. When Max sent pictures, they became very excited. Max asked if they might learn from it, reverse engineering it to discover advanced technology. The Torrian's told him that sadly no, the technology was very low. It was very likely matched to that of the earthling's technology. Not the same technology of course, but of similar advancement. The Oppressors were clever and careful with their deployments of technology, using only that which was sufficient to deal with the situation, and limiting the risk of up-arming their prey. The Oppressors had many strange ways, but this one made sense.

  The aliens were so pleased with the drone that they suggested a trade. They had a ship of the Oppressors. A small one, but intact. It was no more advanced than the Torrian's ships, so of no practical use or value to them. They already had a number of similar samples. Max wondered if they were making a sort of collection. He asked if that was the case and they were a bit cagey about it. He took that to mean that yes, it was a collection thing. Whatever their reasons, it seemed an obvious choice to accept the offer.

  They ejected the drone out of the cargo bay, still in its collector sleeve, the copper mesh bag. The Torrians scooped it up and transmitted the coordinates of the Oppressor ship. But the ship wasn't what one would call nearby. It wasn't even in their current system. At first Max felt disappointed and foolish for not asking more questions about the ship. But Snow took a break, from training Doozer as a zero-g crabthelete, and pointed out that it could be to their advantage. They couldn't jump until the Torrians did and if the ship had been in the area, they would have had no time to figure out what to do with it.

  When the mining drones were full, the alien science team transported the Akoronite to the area of the alien mining ships and simply dumped it in the area, allowing the aliens to 'mine' it and fill their hoppers.

&nbs
p; In no time the alien mining ships were filling. The science team was overjoyed. Apparently, this meant they had time to fill given that they would still only rendezvous with their fleet at the scheduled time. They planned to fill the time with a backlist of science tasks in systems of low mineral wealth. Why they were tied so closely to the mining operation they did not say. They never heard directly from the mining boss, but a countdown to jump was issued by the science team. And a nugget of information was passed down by the friendly Torrian's as explanation. When a ship jumped it caused a brief shadow for another ship to jump without showing up on the Oppressor's crystal ball, the system or device that allowed GE to track the origin point of a darkwave jump. Or so the Torrians believed. They didn't explain how they had learned of it. In addition to this nugget came a gem-crusted-boulder of information in the form of a database of language information. Linda nearly lost her mind she was so excited.

  On a whim, and at the last moment, Max told Linda to send the coordinates of Grailliyn to the Torrian scientists. It didn't seem likely they would help simply for the sake of goodwill, but perhaps they would value the chance to fight the Oppressors. Maybe they could learn something. More likely they would only lure the nerds, to bear witness and record events. But with GE already in town, it could hardly get worse.

  As the timer ran down, they packed additional mining bags of Akoronite tight around the ship, filling the gaps inside the jump sphere. It was tricky, and risky. If any of the material crossed the line, between inside and outside the sphere, it would be sure to disrupt the jump bubble and they preferred not to be around when GE arrived. The mining drones were outside the ship to nudge the bags as necessary. The ship was full. Every space available was crammed with Akoronite. Cargo bay, Sleeping Quarters, lounge. Even the cockpit was stuffed full of bags of Akoronite.

  The alien's lead jumper folded space and blinked out of existence. A moment later, at the designated time, Snow slammed the red button and they made their own fold contributing to a complex pattern space origami. Though no one was left in system to view it.

  The Dee-Dub returned to rational space, in close orbit around Grailliyn. Familiar blue green seas edged along a broad, low-tide coast of brown. Further from the sea the land became beige, then pale green. The color swatches were interrupted by the semi-regular, grayish blotch that signified a large city. Though the landscape was unknown to him, Max felt his body relax a bit, knowing that he was home. He guessed, and then had it confirmed by Linda, that they were above the south somewhere. As he took in more of the view he noticed, closer to the horizons, more cities. They were smaller, but still their sprawl spread substantially wider than cities in the north. The large one was probably Entaarguuishawa, the largest city on the planet. Bigger even than New York, in both size and population. This was likely the only view he would ever have of that city or those that surrounded it. The North and the South had no relationship at all, save that part they had each played in The War, with southern forces aiding Tawnee. If the rest of the Southern shores were like this, Max could understand why the south had no interaction with the north. Unlike the steep cliffs of the western coast in the North, the South had broad sloping shores that stretched for miles between the low and high tide marks. It would require a great deal of motivation for the southerners to make use of the sea.

  Longissima was not in line of sight of the Dee-Dub, and all satellites must have all been around the horizon, because as yet there had been no communications with the earthlings on the mothership.

  “There's the cargo pod,” Snow said, pointing out the canopy of an object glinting brightly in sunlight, on the edge of the atmosphere and the star filled blackness of space. The cargo pod was one of many left in various orbits for them to drop off their precious cargo, without having to drop into the gravity well of Mega. Paranoia of alerting GE to activity on Mega, should they happen upon the unmanned cargo pods, was the reason for using the orbit of Grailliyn for the drop off, even though it would take longer to deliver the mineral.

  “We will be in docking range in a minute,” Linda said.

  A white line appeared in the atmosphere drawing a line from black space to Entaarguuishawa. A small puffy cloud appeared over the city. Then, as Max watched in horror, a ring of destruction expanded from below the cloud outwards towards the edge of the city. There was no sound to accompany the city’s destruction. Max struggled to find words. His mouth hung open but silent.

  “What?” Snow asked, she followed his gaze. It took her a moment to understand what he was seeing. “Oh no…”

  “We don't have time to wait,” Max said, finally finding something to say. “Linda. Hot drop us down to Longissima. Now.”

  Part Three

  A Rather Blustery Day

  Chapter 28

  “Longissima, this is Dee-Dub. Come in over.” It was not the first attempt Max had made to contacting the crew of the wrecked mothership.

  They had jumped the Dee-Dub right down in front of the Longissima's hanger door. Snow wondered if they might be in a communications blind spot. But positioned as they were, directly in front of Longissima's cargo bay doors, that seemed unlikely, and they'd had no such issues on their departure. With no response, their options were limited. They could climb out of the ship and take a look around, but only if they could first get the Dee-Dub's doors open. Dense bags of Akoronite hung from various points around the ship, blocking both of the cockpit doors as well as the cargo bay door with their substantial mass. They had been expecting assistance with the removal of said bags when they placed them there, in the cargo loading paradise environment that was zero-g.

  “What the hell is going on?” Max said. “Is everyone on coffee break?”

  “Something is definitely wrong,” Linda said. “The radio should not be dead. And there's no network feed either.”

  Snow was feeling the same frustration. They had just witnessed a level of annihilation beyond anything she had ever imagined. It had taken place far away. And she knew none of those people. But that made the shock of it no less overwhelming. What could they do about it? They were just a couple of tiny humans, not much more than children. Pass the information on. That was the least they could do. But even that small task was becoming a challenge.

  “We could try the bathroom hatch,” Snow said.

  The bathroom hatch opened inwards. And with the bathroom door closed you had a backup airlock, not that saving the cabin air was much of a priority at the moment.

  Max slapped his forehead. “Right,” he said, and struggled clumsily to climb over the seats to the back. Snow followed him. Doozer, alerted by the excitement scuttered over the seats ahead of her, keeping pace with Max. Linda followed along last. Snow noted the rifle holstered on Linda's back and felt a shiver up her spine. They might have need of it.

  When she reached the bathroom, Max was already squirming up and out the hatch. He'd had to remove the axe from his back in order to squeeze through the tighter than usual passage. Taut lines were stretched across in two directions, though they were off center enough for his lanky body to squeeze through. He reached his hand back into the hatch and Snow handed him the axe. He made quick work of the lines with the axe, dropping heavy bags of the priceless cargo onto the ice below the ship. Doozer, Snow, and Linda then followed him out of the ship.

  Adjusting back to gravity was not difficult, but Snow did make one failed attempt to scoot weightlessly along the path to the airlock located on the side of the hanger. They reached the airlock. Snow started to wonder if it would open. Would GE commandos know how to block access? But the hatch opened. The seconds ticked by slowly as the airlock cycled. When it finished, the four of them filed into the hanger, past workbenches lined with tools, a sandwich, a cold cup of coffee. A beam of red light flashed from the corridor leading from the bay. Max went down like a bag of sand, a smoking hole in his helmet. Snow expected to see something menacing in the corridor. An alien of some sort. A GE commando, or a robotic death machine bristling with
weapons. Instead she saw a young human, not much older than she was. He was carrying a rifle. An accident? She bent down to examine Max. Max couldn't be dead from an accident.

  Another beam of light lit the space where her head had been.

  “Cease firing,” Linda said. “We are friend—”

  Snow looked up in time to see the man pointing something at Linda, who was now frozen in stride, her rifle still on her back.

  The man saw Snow glance at the rifle. He dashed into the bay putting himself between Snow and Linda letting off a burst of fire as he moved. Snow stayed low.

  Doozer was thrown. He hadn't quite figured out there was violence happening. But when he looked at Snow, he saw something there that set him into full aggression, and he suddenly became blurry and harder to see.

  Struggling to emphasize the command she said, “Doozer, Attack.” She pointed towards Linda's location.

  Doozer was alert, but uncertain. He glanced in the direction she was pointing. Snow could hear the man moving, looking for an angle to fire. She still wasn't sure this wasn't all some big mistake. But with Max lying on the floor, with a hole in his helmet, she didn't care.

  Swallowing hard to clear her throat, Snow tried the command again. “Doozer… Attack!”

  Doozer scuttled off like a blurry lightning bolt, his feet clattering menacingly on the hanger deck.

  The man stifled a shout of fear. Snow, still low, moved at the man from the other direction, picking up Max's axe as she passed over his body.